Re: [spoon-discuss] Re: [Spoon-business] Nweek 42 BALLOT

[Mark Karasek <mkarasek@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 28 May 2003 21:49:38 -0400, Baron von Skippy 
<baronvonskippy@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> > > > Proposal 1549/0: Pseudocode (The Pusher Robot)
> > > NO - Even if this passed, you would still get kicked in the ass every 
> > > time you did it, because Pseudocode is inherently annoying to anyone 
> > > who honestly couldn't give a damn about coding. I'd encourage you to 
> > > declare this fatally flawed.
> >
> > I don't really see how pseudocode is any more annoying than poetry or 
> > song form. If anything, it should be easier to understand. (Perl, on the 
> > other hand, I can understand, and I imagine I'll try and stay away from 
> > doing that again. After all, God speaks in Perl, so I'm not surprised 
> > that some mere mortals have difficulty with it ;-) ) Besides, you 
> > shouldn't worry, it'll fail anyway.
>
> -Not all of us speak in code; I know what Java I picked up in a one- 
> semester course, which isn't a lot, and that's it. At least songs and 
> poems use real words. And don't tell me that "public void ThisProp()" is 
> real words, or I will have to Kick you for unbridled hostility to my 
> sanity. Hey, that should be on the LOGAS as well...-
>
> [[BvS]]

Real words, sure. However, songs and poems also tend to be structured in 
whatever way happens to sound best--as opposed to pseudocode, which has a 
nice, logical structure. Real programming languages often--well, usually-- 
have lots of "fake" words, as it were, as well as lots of symbols, the 
meaning of which is sometimes not real obvious. Not so with pseudocode; 
it's meant to be easy to understand, as it represents an idea that can then 
be implemented in a variety of other languages. For example:

set x = Baron von Skippy's score
set y = The Pusher Robot's score
if x > y
	[[perform action]]
else if x < y
	[[perform other action]]
else [[x must equal y]]
	[[perform third action]]

Not too complicated, right? I suppose maybe it's just because I'm so used 
to it; if it's any more difficult for a non-coder to decipher the above 
than to wade through the text of a poem and figure out what it's saying, I 
will concede that maybe pseudocode isn't the best way to go.
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